There are different ways to greet the sun when it rises in the morning. Some prefer it with a shot of rum, others by doing yoga. I prefer the shot, with my camera. The important thing is to arrive at an interesting, lonely spot, way before the sun even thinks about rising above the horizon.

The horizon is easy to find, out in the open. If you have a large body of water at your disposal it will be even easier. By the way, you don’t have an excuse for a crooked horizon this time.

Many times I hear from professional photographers that you have to have some kind of symmetry in your pictures. Why? "Well, it is better” is the answer. To what is better or not in my pictures I have no answer. I am not an art photographer, although some of my pictures hang on people’s walls. I try to record what I see and what moves me somehow.

I believe that if I don’t have a story or some mood for a picture, the picture will usually not see the light of day outside my Lightroom catalogue. Believe me, I have lots of pictures in there. But sometimes, just sometimes, the picture is good enough to be shown for one reason or another. Often it is to illustrate a story, not so often it is the picture that induces the mood.

What do you get when you create a group of 16 photographers and go out shooting in the night? Fantastic shots everywhere and a lot of fun. Last week I went with the Manitoba Foto Friends to Riding Mountain National Park. When I mention a park, many people around the world have no idea what a park in Canada entails. Imagine that this park is about as big as… say… the city of Paris plus the suburbs.

So there we were, shooting our hearts out on the shores of Clear Lake in the park. The evening kicked off with a pretty sunset.

Over the last few years I have been asked many times about how I take my night shots. Mostly if it depends on the camera, the settings, the lenses and what not. Usually I don’t really answer the question. Because there is no real definitive answer.

What I can talk about is how I started out and what has become of my view of the night sky and night vision.